Hormones Cause Breast Cancer

Lawsuit Alleges Hormones Caused Breast Cancer

Two women in Oregon and Washington blame their breast cancer on hormone replacement therapy  and want the federal government to ban synthetic hormone products for women.

The women and their Portland attorney, Michael Williams,  believe the medication Prempro, prescribed for symptoms of menopause, is responsible for breast cancer in thousands of American women.

Mary Chandler, 68, thinks her physicians were misled by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, which markets Prempro, into believing that the medication was safe. Diagnosed in 2001, Chandler underwent a lumpectomy.  She lives in fear that the cancer might return. She had taken Prempro for 4 1/2 years.

Joan Lydie, 74, of Northeast Portland said she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999, underwent a lumpectomy, six months of chemotherapy and 33 radiation treatments after taking Premarin and Provera -- two components of Prempro -- for 15 to 20 years.

Williams has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the two women in U.S. District Court in Portland. The litigation has been transferred to U.S. District Court in Little Rock, Ark., and combined with some 10,000 other hormone replacement therapy cases filed in federal courts across the U.S.

Williams cited a study suggesting that a decline in the incidence of breast cancer from 2002 to 2003 might have stemmed from a dramatic drop in the use of hormone replacement therapy during that period. That study, by Dr. Peter Ravdin of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, was presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in December.

Responding to the study, Dr. Joseph S. Camardo, Wyeth's North American medical director, wrote in a memo to physicians in January that the study could not firmly establish a cause for the drop in breast cancer.

For many decades physicians recommended that menopausal women take replacement hormones to ward off symptoms such as hot flashes and mood swings. But in 2002 a study of more than 16,000 U.S. women found that hormones weren't necessarily a good idea for all women. In some, the drugs could cause problems including heart ailments, breast cancer and strokes.

My comments about hormone replacement therapy and hormones causing breast cancer:

Several years ago during a doctor's appointment at Kaiser, I got in a heated argument with the doctor who insisted I start taking hormone replacement therapy. I flatly refused. I did not want to interfere with my body's natural decision-making process as to what hormones I need and when.  This was long before my breast cancer diagnosis.  I am so glad I had the common sense not to do it or go along with them. 

A long-time friend who was head of an alternative cancer group in California for more than 25 years, did not have cancer through most of that time.  She had a heart rhythm problem in her sixties and started taking hormone replacement therapy -- at that time Premarin.  This was many years before they discovered it was causing serious health problems.  At that time they insisted the estrogen would protect her heart.  Finally she developed breast cancer in her late seventies and we were pretty much shocked. She had been on a fairly good diet but not a totally plant-based diet.  She basically supplemented a standard American diet with some juicing and plant foods.  Not enough nutritious foods though.  She died from the breast cancer, not heart problems. It was determined the hormone replacement therapy had done nothing to help her heart all along.

My mother took Pemarin for many years before she passed away in 1984.  She had wondered many times whether it was a good idea to take it or not, she was a registered nurse and had been the night superivisor in a large hospital for 13 years etc.  I remember the little yellow pill and the discussions about it.  We knew so little then.  She developed a lyomyosarcoma (a soft tissue cancer in the uterus.)  By the time it was discovered it had metastasized to her spinal cord.  She had to have a hysterectomy and a partial removal of the spinal tumor leaving her paralyzed - a paraplegic.  She passed away 2  years later.